The star of today’s shopping trip: a new toaster. We’ve needed a new one for awhile: our old one is a 4-slot toaster we got from Freecycle that takes so long the bread has time to GO STALE. But I couldn’t justify the cost of a toaster when we technically already had one. This toaster finally motivated me to make the purchase. For one thing, it’s stainless steel, so now I can enjoy noticing every fingerprint like everyone else.
But wait, there’s more! Gone are the days of spending tortuous long hours manually coiling the cord! This baby winds it up FOR you with the press of a button! Space-age!
Also, there is a COUNTDOWN TIMER, so you know when your toast is about to pop up! Now Mother won’t totally screw up breakfast for her family by serving ill-timed toast!
But this is my favorite feature: a big dent, so it was $9.00 instead of $36. And it’s not even as dramatic as it looks in the picture.
(Look! I already have fingerprints to wipe off!)
I also bought this handheld solitaire game. I wanted it at $14.99, but no. I saw it at 30% off and 50% off, but no. At 75% off ($3.74) it was MINE, BABY.
Nailpolish. Two-dollar nailpolish, so maybe it won’t be any good, but I thought the color had potential.
The last time I bought the “beauty bar” bar soap I use on my face was when I found a bunch of 8- or 12-packs of it on 75% off, maybe…ten years ago. To my surprise, when I used up a bar and went to get a fresh bar, I was actually OUT OF SOAP. I thought I must be mistaken, but it appeared to be true: I would need to PURCHASE soap. I bought Ivory because I’d recently read in a celebrity magazine that some celebrity’s mother told her to ONLY use Ivory soap on her face. When I was buying the soap I was remembering that it was Elizabeth Taylor, but when I was taking this picture I remembered that I think it was actually Jennifer Lopez. That is…not quite as pleasing, but she does have beautiful skin too.
(One bar already in the shower.)
Cute Easter eggs for next year’s egg hunt, 90% off, so 50 cents. I also got some candy, but let’s just gloss over that.
(Package-ripping courtesy of Henry, who was bored in the cart.)New Target-brand bandaids. The hearts/flowers set is nice, but the other set is even better: one is cute giraffes/monkeys/elephants, and another is rows of purple penguins. (The third is teddies.)
These were YESTERDAY’S shopping trip, but whatevs. Elizabeth likes to wear dresses and skirts (with four boys, I say “OMG THANK GOODNESS”), and she’s been wearing her velvet-top-and-huge-poofy-gold-skirt Christmas dress once a week to kindergarten, and it really was not made for that many launderings, so I was looking forward to post-Easter dress clearances. I got one really-almost-TOO-dressy pink dress that would work as a flower girl dress and has beading and many layers of fabric under the skirt; one yellow eyelet sundress; and one brightly flowered sundress. All 75% off.
(It really is difficult to take nice photos of clothes.See also: eBay, where even awesome-condition cute brand-name clothes
look awful when photographed flat on someone’s bed.)
A) I love how it says “Countdown to GREAT TOAST!”…like the bread marketing people have a special joint arrangement with Black and Decker to increase Toast Interest & Excitement
B) I have a VERY SIMILAR nail polish and though I bought it on a whim, and still feel slightly uneasy about it, it is one of my most commented/complimented on colors. People love to talk about that nail polish, and I have no idea why. I am interested to hear if you experience the same!
Excellent haul!
I think perhaps “watching bread toast” is second only to “watching paint dry” on the incredibly boring ways to spend one’s time scale. And now I’m going to be watching the hardware store shelves for cans labeled “Countdown to DRY WALLS!”
I love the party dresses and I super-love Elizabeth for wearing them on regular basis. It’s not like they’re going to fit next year, so why not wearing a special even dress more than once?
Totally digging the band aids and nail polish….does bar soap not dry out your skin? When I ve used it on my body my skin always felt tight and dry afterward so I’m imagining that happen to my face?
Not that it matters, I still get major pimples so I have to stick with my Noxzema.
Ooh I love the dent too!
I have a similar nail polish and I find it looks better on my toes than my fingernails. (Don’t know why I feel this way.)
I use Ivory all the time and I love it. I have used the one you bought for YEARS, but just recently bought a new aloe kind to try.
I agree about the eBay photos on the bed or when they try to do it on the floor and you see freshly vacuumed carpet streaks. hehe
Agree with Nik-Nak: I am jealous you can use less expensive regular old soap on your face; I can’t even use it on my BODY without being tight and dry even after lotion. It’s all body washes and face washes over here, at five or six bucks a pop! Grr.
And Addy too is in a huge dress loving phase; I’m starting to wonder if her teachers are ok with her showing up to play on the playground in big poofy skirts, like if it’s technically dangerous or something? But they haven’t said anything yet, so I guess they figure if I don’t mind getting the dresses dirty and torn, it’s not their concern.
Nik-Nak- I usually use “beauty bars” (Oil of Olay, Dove, Caress), so they don’t dry out my skin. We’ll see with the Ivory, though—nothing “beauty bar” about it!
Sarah- Ditto to what I said to Nik-Nak—I don’t use regular bar soap, but rather the “beauty bars” which have a big chunk of moisturizer in them. But Ivory will likely be an entirely different story.
I use Dove – I can’t stand body wash or face wash, it makes me feel greasy, but I have issues (once I had to return a container of body butter because just the name made me unable to put it on my skin). The dresses are adorable and I always fall for cute bandaids too. Do you seriously have five kids and only one girl? Yikes!
I have that brand of polish in another color and it is fine. Just have to do multiple coats, which I would do anyway.
holy smokes, just looking at all of these purchases was intensely satisfying. i went on a one year no shopping project for my 30th birthday and i still have 4 months left, so whenever i can see the goodies someone else picked up, i just go ahead and pretend i was there. sad, i know. it’s what i’ve been reduced down to.
a total score on that toaster!!
This is so weird. I was literally just staring at our toaster this morning and thinking, “How long will this toaster last us? How will I know when it’s time to get a new one? Will it have to break? Will I still be making toast in this toaster in 10 years, when my oldest child is (gasp) 20? Probably.”
Seriously. This was the thought process. AND THEN YOU GOT A NEW ONE. It’s like I get to live vicariously.
I always love your shopping trip posts. My favorite things about this one:
The giant “COUNTDOWN TO GREAT TOAST!” banner on your toaster.
Those cute Easter eggs.
The red-trimmed floral dress! I die!
We have the worst time finding a decent toaster. I want one big enough to toast bagels, 2 slots, that doesn’t either incinerate the bread or take long enough for my roots to start showing before it toasts. We’re on our third toaster of our married life (8 years) and our current is okay but I don’t love it. Why is it so difficult?
I have some of that nail polish. It’s cheap and in fun colors, hard to beat.
Must try those new bandaids. Are bandaids like crack at your house? Because at our house a bandaid is an awesome bribery tool also capable of solving the slightest (and often imaginary) wound.
Mrs. Irritation- Oh, MAN: I recently brought home a box of Phinneas and Ferb bandaids, and the next time someone had an owie the tears switched off like a faucet.
“Countdown to great toast!” – love it!
I also love the nailpolish, which seems to be similar to Swistle blue. I hope it looks lovely on the nails, because it’s SO disappointing when a color looks lovely in the bottle and then yucky on the hands.
And the dresses? SO PRETTY. I am also admiring the bandaids. Penguins would make any owie easier to bear.
I’m irrationally exuberant about your new toaster purchase because I’ve been giving our toaster the side-eye for years. It takes FOREVER to toast anything and always has. I have to put the bread in about 5 minutes before I start anything else so that it can toast for 5 minutes first and then for another 80 hours while I make the rest of the meal. Still, I can’t bring myself to chuck it – it still technically works and frankly, I’m worried that every other toaster is going to be the same. Toaster indecision! Will reference your post again when my toaster either finally bites it or I get too fed up to deal with it any longer.
My daughter wore the pink dress to my brother’s wedding. Such a good buy. Love all your shopping purchases!
Those dresses are TO DIE FOR. So cuuuuute!
I love and am jealous of every single purchase you made. I especially love those bandaids, my three year old goes so insane for them, I give her a box of bandaids as a gift and you’d think it was a … well, a toaster or a super pretty dress. I don’t think she has ever NEEDED a bandaid, but she loves them all the same.
Love all your shopping purchases, Swistle. Could you post the model # of your new toaster. I love the cord reel and the timer minutes on yours. Thanks. Kathyp
I love your new nailpolish color. I went on a shopping excursion yesterday specifically for the purpose of procuring new colors. Very fun.
You got an amazing deal on your toaster!
Kathyp- It looks like it’s TR1280S. I think the second-to-last digit is a zero, not the letter O.
Ha! You got me with “ill-timed toast.” Perfect.
You’re much more adventurous on colors than I am, but that nail polish brand lasts forever, and it’s so much cheaper than anything else. Love it!
My kids would want toast 50 times a day with a countdown like that.
I love the countdown to GREAT TOAST! as well as the cord that automatically retracts. I have a coffee grinder with a cord that can retract but man, it is practically a work out getting that thing put away.
Cute, cute, cute dresses.